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Somewhere in a Republican advertising agency, a young man is enjoying a cigar, ordering pizza and assembling the following TV ad. It begins with a Democratic congressman from a competitive district looking reasonable in a manly lumberjack shirt. “The Democratic party is a Big Tent,” he says. The screen goes dark. The announcer says, “A Big Tent? Big enough for what?
Rod Liddle, associate editor of The Spectator, has died aged 66. This is the first column he wrote for the magazine on March 9, 2002. It's always a life-affirming moment – for me, at least. The aeroplane has groaned and wheezed its way up, up, above the city and – improbably, to my mind – established a sort of equilibrium with the ethereal new world around it. The engines begin to sound more at ease. Perhaps I won't die this time, after all. And then, the seatbelt signs flick off, and from somewhere far down the aisle, towards first class, there comes the chinkety-chink-chink of the trolley. So, I am not going to die – and, better still, I'm going to be given a nice drink.
In an extremely rare bilateral move, the US and Japan have intervened to shore up the Japanese yen, which has been steadily losing value and sliding towards a 40-year low. The news was confirmed by the Japanese Finance Ministry this morning. President Trump preceded the announcement by explaining that the US was “always there to help Japan.” In truth, there wouldn’t have been much point in denying it – a Reuters photo showed a memo on US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Beasant's desk with the simple instruction “To Do – Buy Japanese Yen (JPY) 5-10 billion.” The dollar fell to 157 yen after the announcement, well down from the 164 (considered by Morgan Stanley the highest tolerable point for the Japanese government) of the previous week. This is an extraordinary move.
Gus Carter is joined by Geoffrey Cain to speak about the ongoing developments in Chinese AI, and how it stacks up to its American rivals. Gus and Geoffrey talk about the emergence of Kimi K3, and how Chinese models will become inherently more competitive to global audiences, not just those the United States. They also discuss the OpenAI model that went rogue, and how other US models refused to undertake research to prevent the same from happening again. Learn how to earn yield on gold, paid in gold, at Monetary-Metals.com/Americano Produced by Henry Lloyd https://www.youtube.com/watch?
European Union interior ministers will hold an emergency video conference on Tuesday to discuss last week’s events in Spain's North African enclave of Ceuta. More than 60,000 Moroccans surged across the border, and although the majority have returned the invasion has traumatized many member states. Italy and Denmark initiated the meeting and soon had the support of twenty other EU countries. In a letter to the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the 22 leaders declared: “We have a duty to effectively deter and relentlessly combat illegal migration, by coordinating our action, strengthening our external borders and addressing all policies that can serve as pull factors.
Spain was invaded yesterday. There is no other way to put it. Close to 50,000 foreigners, mostly men, swarmed into Spanish territory and laughed and jeered as they went. Every generation before ours would have called that an invasion, and we should too. The era of euphemism is over. The left’s house of lies has fallen. We can all now see with our own eyes that our nations are being overwhelmed by cocky, often hostile men from afar. It isn’t only Spain’s sovereign integrity that lies in tatters following the storming of Ceuta – so does the tyranny of euphemism we’ve all been forced to labor under these past few years The footage from Ceuta is extraordinary – throngs of foreigners, mostly men from Morocco, gatecrashed an enclave of the Spanish kingdom.
Dr. Fauci won’t see you now. The man who served as America’s top medical adviser during Covid had to be subpoenaed to appear before the Senate this week. Wanted to hear his expert opinion? Too bad. Almost every question received the same response. "On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution." Anthony Fauci’s silence is the perfect coda to the madness of the Covid era. We were told, again and again, to "trust the science." But the science establishment didn’t trust us. Information was withheld, facts were twisted and opinions suppressed. Fauci was given a sweeping presidential pardon by Joe Biden. Yet even now, years later and immune from consequences, Dr. Fauci doesn’t want to talk.
When asked on The Root whether he'd support cash reparations for black New Yorkers, Mayor Mamdani said he wouldn't rule it out: "Here in New York City, we were very complicit." The mayor promised an answer once the city's Commission on Racial Equity reports back in 2027. Slightly inflammatory and highly performative, his answer hit his sweet spot perfectly. He is teasing his supporters with a radical, racialized policy that has no price tag and no implementation plan, just outrage. Zohran Mamdani is a better content creator than mayor. He knows exactly which topics will generate clicks, articles and outrage. That's a valuable skill for an influencer or a campaigner – earned media is the best priced media, but less so for a mayor who actually has to govern a major American city.
The US Senate narrowly defeated a measure yesterday intended to crimp, if not terminate, President Trump’s ability to conduct hostilities against Iran. The 50-49 vote on a war powers resolution testified to the mounting hostility toward the military campaign among American voters, two-thirds of whom regard the conflict as a futile endeavor. The result is that Trump’s own popularity rating has plummeted to 32 percent, edging out Joe Biden’s 33 percent shortly before he declared that he was exiting the presidential race in July 2024. Presumably, this is one personal record that Trump will not be inclined to tout at his MAGA rallies. What is to be done? Two diametrically opposed camps have emerged on the right to advise Trump on Iran.
Summertime, and the living isn’t as easy as it used to be. The dying, though, is getting easier, especially if you’re in France, Canada or New York. New York’s MAID law will come into effect August 5: supposedly only for those whose deaths are expected within six months, supposedly through self-administered doses only. But the details don't matter. The important part is this: in New York, the state can now authorize the taking of innocent human life. In early July, the French Senate rejected euthanasia for the fourth time in a row. But the government invoked Article 45 of the French constitution and forced the legislation through, "creating a right" to assisted suicide (as if the state were the divine origin of rights, and could create them at the snap of a finger).
As Gianni Infantino pursues a new future for FIFA, Matt McDonald is joined by Vanity Fair senior editor Jack Holmes to discuss whether the FIFA President is turning into Donald Trump. Just weeks after the end of a highly controversial World Cup, Infantino plans to shake up the foundations of global football (or soccer, if you prefer). But will his bold strategy come to fruition, or might it suffer the same fate as the once mooted European Super League? And what hand will the President of the United States have in all of this? Learn how to earn yield on gold, paid in gold, at Monetary-Metals.com/Americano Produced by Henry Lloyd. https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Air Force One may not use commercial airports, but Donald Trump has nonetheless taken the initiative to plan a major overhaul of Dulles International Airport, the government-owned DC area international airport. Alongside Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy, Trump revealed the plans of the $22.5 billion renovation in the Oval Office this afternoon. The President emphasized the "bipartisan" nature of this project, which is included alongside the administration’s other efforts to “Make Washington DC Safe and Beautiful Again.” “Whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, you don’t want to go and be subjected to this airport. Because this airport – it’s a terrible place to be,” Trump said.
Portland’s downtown area, though not without a certain residual hippy charm, increasingly resembles the Dunkirk of May 1940. Standing on top of the city’s Moda Tower at night is to survey the aftermath of a battle, with legions of homeless residents hunched together around braziers or lying on cots displayed in rows on the sidewalk. It appears as if the police in Portland can’t be bothered to enforce the few remaining laws involving public drug use or fouling the streets. But the truth is there simply aren't enough cops to enforce the laws after the city council became one of the first Democratic strongholds to defund the police in the wake of the George Floyd riots in 2020. Now the results of that ideological experiment are in.
This is a fraught moment, perhaps the most dangerous since the end of the Cold War. Two major wars are being fought, one threatening European security, the other the world’s energy supply. In East Asia, China continues to threaten Taiwan, and North Korea is reportedly upgrading its military technology with Russian help. Put simply, the bad guys are on the march, fighting for their regimes’ survival, their malign domestic projects, and as much regional domination as they can achieve. Although the wars in Ukraine and Iran have remained largely separate, there have been several intersections recently and a gnawing fear they could merge into a global conflict. That grim possibility is still a longshot, but there is real danger because the coalitions fighting the two wars overlap.
In his final hours in office, President Joe Biden issued a preemptive, blanket legal pardon for Dr. Anthony Fauci, the most visible US health official during the Covid pandemic, for any and all actions he took from 2014 on, the same kind of pardon he granted his son Hunter Biden. Fauci, like Hunter Biden, thus literally rose above the law. That’s what made today’s decision by Fauci to take the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee so shocking. After Fauci repeatedly invoked the Fifth, chairman Rand Paul told Fauci he would face “repercussions” for refusing to answer questions based on a valid congressional subpoena.
With the death of Lindsey Graham and the disappearance of Mitch McConnell, a link to the past seems to have broken. The United States senators had been the symbols of a conservatism that Trump destroyed in 2015. They were the bitter-enders of a dying Republican tradition, we were told. Through McConnell and Graham’s influence, Trump was persuaded to arm Ukraine, delay the withdrawal from Afghanistan, reform and rename NAFTA rather than scrap it, and attack Iran. Graham and McConnell had given this Republicanism a strange posthumous existence throughout Trump's two administrations by various acts of bartering and maneuver. But their battle was always supposed to be a losing one. By the end of 2015, Trumpian nationalism had already conquered the Republican base.
From my home in Ávila I usually have a splendid view of the ancient town’s medieval walls. But yesterday morning the wind changed direction and they were largely obscured by a pall of wildfire smoke. The town hall issued health advice and recommended closing windows. But I’m among the fortunate. Everyone in Burgohondo, 25 miles south of Ávila, has been evacuated. It is the village my wife’s family comes from, and where the fire started. Across the region, tens of thousands have already been forced to leave their homes. And the forecast is ominous. Last year I suggested that Spain’s summer fires are made so frequent and destructive by long, hot, dry summers and by rural depopulation, with the resulting abandonment of farming and grazing.
Diplomatic relations between France and the USA are more strained than ever following a row at the United Nations. The fallout began on Friday when the US was one of ten countries to vote against the renewal of Voker Turk as UN High Commissioner of Human Rights. They were in the minority. Turk, an Austrian, was reappointed by the General Assembly with 144 votes for and 13 abstentions. In response to the vote, the French mission to the UN in Geneva posted a message on social media devoid of any diplomatic nuance. “The United States was once a beacon of human rights,” it began. “That is no longer the case. Today, they find themselves isolated alongside North Korea, Nicaragua, Mali and Russia. And the world is no longer listening to them.” It added a hashtag: “America Alone.
On Monday, an unusually camera-shy Benjamin Netanyahu hopped on a flight to Washington. It wasn’t totally clear he would. Officially, Netanyahu was travelling to attend the funeral of the late senator Lindsey Graham, last of the neocons, his supporter and friend. Unofficially, he wanted to get another face-to-face meeting with President Donald Trump. But some “sources” around Trump hinted that the President would be too busy to squeeze the Israeli PM into his diary. A Trump snub would be embarrassing for Bibi, and suddenly he, too, was very busy and might not be able to make the funeral after all.
Speaking at The Hill’s Nation Summit last week, Florida Republican Kat Cammack claimed that the Chinese government was deploying “digital twins” of every member of Congress. These twins, digital replicas of individual lawmakers, are reportedly built from publicly available data and used to manipulate American politics. Cammack offered no evidence for this allegation, while the broader media largely ignored it. American academics had already published a proof of concept Yet, Cammack’s statement is more interesting than critics might recognize. China may or may not have built 535 virtual legislators. But it easily could. More importantly, somebody almost certainly will.
